When I recently took the plunge and shaved my head, a Facebook friend said, “Welcome to the world of elective male baldness.”
As someone who has been losing his hair since his early 20s, that comment resonated with me. No longer was I a victim of my baldness. Instead, I was choosing to celebrate all things bald. I decided that I could turn my upset about losing my hair into gratitude for my health, my looks and my awesome head-shape. All I needed was a special razor and a little courage.
Then I began to think more deeply about the change in my image. Ever since I started to go bald, I have kept my hair very short out of necessity (nobody likes a comb-over). But it never really felt intentional. It looked clean and neat, but nothing about my haircut said anything about who I am.
I think a lot of small-business owners go through a similar process when they are developing their first brand. I can’t tell you the number of times I have encountered a business that has a logo, but no key message to go with it. Often that logo was drawn up by a talented niece or nephew, or a sign-making or printing company, or by the owner themselves. Like my old haircut, sometimes the visuals are clean and professional, but they don’t say a whole lot.
When you’re first starting off in business, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with finding something that works for now. (My close-cropped haircut worked for me for 10 years!) However, there comes a time in every business when it’s time to move from infancy to maturity, or from what Michael Gerber in The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
That’s the process I embark upon with my clients. We start with a brand survey in which clients start to think about their intentions and the words and images that best represent them. Then we define the core values of their business, identify “good words and bad words,” and develop key visuals that will drive everything we do. We also talk extensively about the client’s customers — likes, dislikes, demographics and psychology. All of this work (which is so much fun that I hesitate to even call it work) takes place before I ever design anything.
In business as in baldness, it’s important to be intentional about who you are. If my clients take anything away from our work together, I hope they discover a new image for their business — one that projects exactly what they wish to see in the world.
Where were you when I started my business?! You’re right on with the fact that most companies just work on “finding something that works for now.”
That’s exactly what happened to me! It was two years before we finally started settling into a brand that said what we wanted it to say.
Now that I’m thinking about starting another business, it’s time to consider “baldly going where no one has gone before…”
Does this mean you’re thinking about shaving your head?
Very well said. I know when I first started my business, we were more interested in getting clients, and less interested in developing a brand. We could have saved ourselves a lot of heartache, stress and money if we would have taken the time to do it right the first time. We finally managed to straighten it all out, but we took the long road. If I could do it all over again, I would have “shaved my head” first, and tried to get customers second.